by Amy Spalding
We laugh about that for a bit, while Carlos pulls up TALON’s VidLook channel so we can laugh at their pathetic numbers. But the numbers aren’t pathetic. The numbers aren’t going to break any records, but maybe in one of those really specific categories such as Southern California Private High Schools they actually could. There are comments too, and not just the type you’re used to finding on VidLook, where people suddenly have unrelated things to say about body parts and fluids. There are real comments, and the usernames appear to be from real students.
The numbers and the comments take something out of us, and I find myself packing up my things and then shepherding the freshmen home. I drive myself home without checking in on Alex, considering that I seem to function more rationally when he isn’t in the picture. Mom and I make homemade pasta, and Darcy’s home on time, and I get through the whole meal with my phone still switched off. Without my phone, Alex might as well not even exist.
Everything would honestly be better if Alex didn’t exist.
Actually, it’s fine that he exists. But my life would be so much easier if he’d never come to our school. And of course that would mean I never would kiss him, that my lips would never feel chapped just from kissing him for a few minutes in a supply room, that we wouldn’t have sessions of kissing that feel torn from the screens of romantic comedies, but that would probably be for the best.
I think so, at least.
Mom and Darcy ask if I’m okay, and I don’t even know how to respond. I retreat into my room to do my homework, but I end up sitting down with my computer instead. I Google “secret relationship” but it’s not as relevant to my life as I want it to be. So I Google “taking down your new media competition” and every article is about a newspaper that goes out of business or turns into a blog, so I give up on Google and get back to homework instead.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When I open my locker the next morning, a scrap of paper falls out and onto my feet. If TALON is up to its flyering again, that can’t be good for any of us.
It’s not a TALON flyer, though. It’s a note.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t imagine yesterday. What’s up?
I take out my phone and hit the power button. But before it’s fully back on, Sadie’s at my side.
“I’m glad you’re still alive,” she says. “I couldn’t handle it if you weren’t, Jules.”
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“You didn’t respond to any of my texts last night,” she says. “So then I called you, but it went straight to your voice mail. So then I emailed you, like a Luddite!”
“My phone died,” I say. “And I didn’t notice until just now. Is everything okay?”
“Oh my god, Mom said the most horrible thing to me last night,” Sadie says as we walk to women’s history. “‘Since Sadie’ll be in New York next year for school, I should strongly consider doing a play again. It was always just so far away, but…’ She’s following me across the whole freaking country.”
“She’s not following you,” I say. “She’ll just be there. Working. She won’t move into your dorm room with you.”
“We’ll have to have dinner all the time with my grandma,” she says.
“That sounds nice,” I say, because I hardly get to see the one of mine who’s still alive.
“Jules, my grandma is so annoying!” Sadie shakes her head. “And the press will be so excited that the great Paige Sheraton is back on Broadway that she’ll have even more attention than usual.”
“I’m… sorry?”
“I’m trying so freaking hard to have my own things,” Sadie says. “And it feels like Mom gets to all of them before I can.”
“I feel like NYU and Broadway will be very separate things,” I say.
“You never share my pain.” Sadie sits down at her desk. “I hope you at least felt bad when you saw all my missed texts and voice mails.”
I still haven’t actually looked at my phone since it powered on and I tossed it into my purse. And I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to without an audience, but I take a chance at my locker after first period lets out. I need to grab my books and go, but instead I sort through Sadie’s texts just so they don’t display as new anymore and check for more texts from Alex.
There’s just one more, but I hate seeing it in black and white on my phone: Are you ignoring me? Everything cool?
I start typing out that it scares me how quickly I can forget about everything else when he’s in the picture, and how kissing him made me so immediately forget about betrayal, and also that there is no way we could publicly be together again after everything that’s happening between TALON and the Crest. But the text is getting long—and frighteningly intense—so I delete all that and type two words instead.
Everything’s cool.
When we sit down at the lunch table, there’s—well, hopefully—no indication of yesterday’s supply room incident. I try to remain chilly in demeanor in his direction, and he’s definitely not trying to include me in any of the weird boy conversations. But, under the table, he rests his foot against mine, so my two-word text must have done its job.
Later at Stray Rescue, we act like barely speaking dog-walking professionals when we arrive, separately, at the shelter. I worry our routine will lose some of its viciousness, so I step up my determination that I’ll walk more dogs than ever before. Alex, of course, notices, and soon we’re neck and neck.
But then our shifts end, and we head outside, where my car awaits.
“No doughnuts?” Alex asks with a grin as I pull him toward my car.
“Doughnuts later,” I say.
We have our old routine ready. Alex pushes back the passenger-side seat and pulls me over to his side. We somehow fit together perfectly; everything feels entwined and our faces are in perfect kissing range. It’s hard to imagine I lived without this for weeks.
“Did you have a lot of groupies?” I ask Alex when things have slowed down but we’re still curled together on his side of the car. “Before?”
“I… guess?” He laughs. “A lot of them were, like, twelve. But, sure, there were some.”
“Some non-twelve-year-olds,” I say.
“Yeah. And girlfriends,” he says. “Those too.”
“You’re the first boy I’ve really liked,” I confess. “Except for this annoying boy at gifted camp, but he barely counts.”
“Whoa.” Alex grins, the grin that melts all my reasonable sense. “I have to hear everything about gifted camp.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I say. “It was at a college in Northern California. We lived in the dorms for two weeks and took classes during the day and had normal camp activities in the evenings.”
“Like s’mores?” Alex asks.
“Well, it was on a campus. So less outdoorsy, more… three-legged races and everything. I was taller than most of the girls, so no one ever wanted to pair up with me for that.”
“I’d pair up with you,” Alex says.
“Boys and girls weren’t allowed to pair up, Alex,” I say. “Anyway, that was the last time I thought a boy was…” Out loud it feels like such a big confession. Alex has had fans and groupies and girlfriends and sex. I’ve had one kiss at gifted camp.
“I missed how much you blush,” Alex says.
“That’s the worst thing about me!”
“Nah.” He grins some more. “Doughnuts?”
“You’re obsessed with doughnuts,” I say.
“So are you.” He touches my mouth with his so softly it feels more like a whisper than a kiss. “At school you eat healthier than anyone at our table. And then the second you’re through with the dogs…”
I laugh. “Not the very second.”
I thought I’d have to have a delicately worded conversation with Alex about the secrecy we require, but there are too many notes in lockers and foot touches under tables to mistake his intentions for public. We don’t even text during school hours.
We do text once school
’s out for the day, but I have Associated Student Body, and by the time I’m out, Alex has to help his mom with chores. Anyway, I have a huge stack of homework as well as student submissions for the Crest. We don’t even have our next idea for increasing readership, and I don’t want to lose momentum on real goals just because the TV-hacking incident felt so successful.
Oh my god, the TV-hacking incident! Should I apologize to Alex? Should I explain I didn’t really have anything to do with it? It doesn’t seem fair to give up Carlos, or even the Crest, but can I spend so much time kissing someone while my organization plots his organization’s downfall?
I could really use secret-relationship guidance.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Do you want to go out?”
Our Saturday shifts have just ended at Stray Rescue. I’m positive Santiago doesn’t know we’re back together because he gave me an empathetic little glance as Alex arrived. We managed to pull this off last night too, so much so that when Sadie and I were in the bathroom of Oinkster at the same time, she apologized for Alex being around so much.
“Yes,” I reply to Alex. “But somewhere people won’t see us.”
He laughs. “I’ll try not to take that personally. And is that possible?”
“People we know, I mean,” I say. “Not people in general.”
“My parents are home right now,” he says. “Or I’d tell you to come over.”
“Oh, you’d tell me?” I smile and slip my hand into his. We’re standing outside, where theoretically anyone could see us. The moment is full of so much more illicit danger than I ever thought I’d experience.
“I’d ask you,” he says.
I decide to drive us to Old Town Pasadena. It’s only one city over from either here or from Eagle Rock, but when people from school want to hang out, they don’t head away from LA proper. If I were Sadie, I’d probably know something cooler to do than hang out in and around shops and restaurants built into old and historic buildings, but even with a secret relationship, I’m not cool.
“How’d your SATs go?” Alex asks me while we’re waiting in the long line stretching out the door of 21 Choices, which has twenty-one different ice-cream options every single day. Normally I don’t think that it’s worth the wait, but today the wait involves holding Alex’s hand in the sunshine.
“How did you know I took them?” I ask.
“You mentioned a while back you were going the first week they were available,” he says. “Hey, I pay attention.”
I smile. “Good! And they were fine. When are you going?”
“Soon,” he says. “I guess. I don’t know where I want to go to college or what I want to study or… anything in that whole area. Which I guess I should deal with at some point.”
“Twenty to fifty percent of college freshmen are undecided,” I say. “So you can just pick a good school.”
“Everything sounds so simple when Jules McAllister-Morgan declares it,” he says with a grin. “Why are you so set on Brown?”
“Oh my god, basically everything. They really emphasize learning for learning’s sake, not just to get good grades or have a good résumé later. You get to design your own program, but since it’s Ivy League, I know I can’t go too off course, and I know my degree will be taken seriously after I graduate. And their campus is beautiful, and when I visited…” I shrug. “It felt right.”
“You’ll get in,” he says.
“Don’t jinx it,” I say. “But thanks.”
My phone beeps in my purse, and I take it out in case it’s one of my moms or anything else that’s urgent.
What are you doing?? is lit up on my screen. The message is from Sadie. It could mean anything. Well, it could mean two things. Obviously she could want to know if I’m free so we can do something. But also maybe somehow she knows where I am and with whom.
“What’s up?” Alex asks.
“Nothing,” I say as I type back an answer. Just running errands after Stray Rescue. “Alex… I know I probably shouldn’t mention this. But I didn’t have anything to do with your video last week.”
He shrugs as we finally step from the outdoors into the shop. We’re so close to ice cream now. “It’s okay if you did.”
“Okay, but I really didn’t.”
We step up to order. Alex gets peanut butter brownie, and I get mango sunshine, which Alex apparently thinks is the funniest sorbet name he’s ever heard, based on his laughter when I order, at least. Once we’ve paid, we exit and hunt down an open bench. We can’t hold hands while eating ice-cream cones, but sitting side by side, I still feel like I’m in another scene straight out of a romantic comedy.
“I know I was supposed to be embarrassed when it happened,” Alex says. “Yeah, everyone staring kind of sucks. But I liked being in Chaos 4 All. I’m not saying I want to be again, and it was weird, for sure. But it was cool too.”
“You were good,” I say. “Great, I mean! I’m glad that it was cool.”
“I thought I’d get to do it forever,” he says. “Back then, at least. It felt like we were the biggest thing in the world. I thought my dad could quit his job and not be gone all the time.”
I like the small moments where Alex doesn’t sound full of the confidence the world gave him a couple of years ago. On-screen for TALON he has all of it back. Maybe cameras hold all his old magic, so when he’s filmed it’s like it never went away. But Alex is this guy too, who isn’t about to throw a wink to an adoring crowd.
I like both Alexes.
Alex leans over and kisses me. Our lips are sticky and sweet, like Popsicles in summer.
“That was a real ray of mango sunshine,” he says, and I laugh so hard I accidentally snort. That sets him off, and then we’re both laughing too hard for kissing or for ice-cream cones. I never would have known before Alex that laughing with a boy could sometimes feel just as perfect as kissing one, if he’s the right boy.
I guess technically Alex is the wrong boy, but I’m pretending for now that that isn’t true.
When I drop off Alex at his house, it hits me that I haven’t looked at my phone in a couple of hours. Have I ever not looked at my phone for a couple of hours, except to sleep? Alex and I wandered in and out of shops, took photos with Alex’s phone in front of City Hall where they shoot TV shows, and snacked at more places than I could ever deem healthy. We barely stopped holding hands. It felt like a real, actual, perfect date.
It felt like how I thought falling in love might feel.
But that all disappears the moment I see my screen full of messages, mostly from Sadie.
Today sucks, call me?
Are you still running errands?
Are you ignoring me?
OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUSLY IGNORING ME?
Jules! Are you OK???
And then a message from Mom:
Is everything okay? Sadie called to see if you were with me. Which you aren’t. Text or call me or Darcy so we know you’re alive.
I start to text Mom, then I think I should respond to Sadie first, and then I realize the best move is probably to just drive home. Luckily Mom and Darcy are both there, and—even luckier—they only look slightly relieved to see me. Peanut and Daisy, on the other hand, circle around me as if I’ve been gone for a decade.
“My phone died,” I say as I sit down to pet the dogs. “I just plugged it in in the car and saw your message. I’m sorry.”
“We aren’t that strict,” Darcy says. “But we need to know if you won’t be home.”
“I know,” I say.
“Is everything okay?” Mom asks.
“I… made up with Alex,” I say, because it sounds like the best way to phrase it. I’m not sure if I can say that we’re together again when in public we can’t be.
“Oh,” Darcy says. “Well, we don’t mind if you’re out with Alex, and there probably isn’t much we wouldn’t let you do.”
“No!” I say. It might have come out as a yell. “I mean, yes, I was out with Alex, but we ju
st went to Old Town.”
“Regardless,” she says with an eyebrow arched, “please just let us know you’ll be out. And if one of us texts or calls, respond.”
“Okay?” Mom asks.
“Of course. I’m sorry. I screwed up. Can I go call Sadie?”
They dismiss me, and I run upstairs—flanked by the dogs—to my room. Sadie’s phone goes right to voice mail when I call, so I text. Sorry. My phone died. Are you okay?
There’s a long pause before I can see that she’s typing back. I’m fine. I’m out with Em. See you Monday.
I guess that sometimes Sadie or I go out with only Em, when the other is busy, or out of town, or sick. But I’m not sure I’ve ever just not been invited. It’s fair, since I was unreachable, but I’m reachable now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As usual, on Monday I’m the one to open the boxes of fresh copies of the Crest. This is one of my favorite parts of the week.
But as I’m flipping through, I see something unfamiliar. “There’s a printing error! Check all the copies! I repeat, check all the copies!”
“Jules, calm down for a moment.” Mr. Wheeler walks up behind me and takes another copy. “Everything looks fine to me.”
“That’s not a printing error,” Carlos says while looking over my shoulder. “That’s layout tampering.”
“But we saw the proofs on Friday! We approved them on Friday! They were fine on Friday!”
“Jules, please.”
Ms. Wang, who teaches creative writing in the next classroom, leans into the room. “Is everything okay in here? We heard a lot of yelling.”
“Things are fine,” Mr. Wheeler says as other staff members crowd around me. The headline to the guest post for the week isn’t “Why I Love the E.V.A. Library,” which is what we approved for the issue, but “New Media Is Our Future.”